The convicted activist was banned from visiting the library

In a colony in Buryatia, activist Natalya Filonova, who is serving time on charges of violence against policemen, was banned from using the library for quoting a poem by Alexander Pushkin. She told about this in a letter from the colony, an excerpt from which was published by volunteer Galina Belyavskaya, who corresponds with political prisoners. The edition of Sibir.Realii drew attention to the publication.

As Filonova writes, at a dinner in the colony dedicated to the memory of Pushkin, a pensioner quoted his poetic epistle to the Decembrists in Siberia, as well as the answer of the Decembrist Alexander Odoevsky.

“There was an evening in memory of Pushkin, where I managed to read the poem “In the depths of Siberian mines.” And Odoevsky’s Decembrist, which was painted in my family at the Petrovsky factory on the wall of the station next to the mosaic panel depicting the arrival of Alexandra Muravyova and the Decembrists she brought “Pushkin’s message “To Siberia”. Odoevsky’s answer itself is no less impressive than Pushkin’s lines:

“Our sorrowful work will not be lost,
A flame will ignite from a spark,
And our people are enlightened
Will gather under the holy banner.

We forge swords from chains
And we will rekindle the flame of freedom!
She will attack the king,
And the people will sigh with joy!” Natalya Filonova quotes in her letter the answer of the Decembrists to Pushkin.

After that, the activists, as she writes, demanded the return of Pushkin’s book and forbade her to go to the library.

At the beginning of 1827, Pushkin sent a poetic epistle to the condemned participants in the Decembrist conspiracy, among whom there were many of his acquaintances. The poem is widely known and was included in the school curriculum.

A criminal case against the activist Natalya Filonova was initiated at the end of October 2022. She was accused of assaulting police officers, one of whom she allegedly broke a finger during a detention at a rally against mobilization in the fall of 2022.

• Since November 2022, the activist has been in a pre-trial detention center. Her adopted son, 16-year-old Vladimir Alalykin, was taken to the orphanage by guardianship authorities.
• In March 2023, an employee of the orphanage did not let Alalykin go to the court hearing to see his mother, and he himself reported on the pressure on him in the orphanage.